"Oh I am lost and found"

"What shall we say about such wonderful things as these? If God is for us, who can ever be against us? Since he did not spare even his own Son but gave him up for us all, won’t he also give us everything else? Who then will condemn us? No one—for Christ Jesus died for us and was raised to life for us, and he is sitting in the place of honor at God’s right hand, pleading for us. Can anything ever separate us from Christ’s love? Does it mean he no longer loves us if we have trouble or calamity, or are persecuted, or hungry, or destitute, or in danger, or threatened with death? No, despite all these things, overwhelming victory is ours through Christ, who loved us. And I am convinced that nothing can ever separate us from God’s love. Neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither our fears for today nor our worries about tomorrow—not even the powers of hell can separate us from God’s love. No power in the sky above or in the earth below—indeed, nothing in all creation will ever be able to separate us from the love of God that is revealed in Christ Jesus our Lord."(Romans 8:31, 32, 34, 35, 37-39 NLT)

I am so blessed and so encouraged by these verses recently. There comes a time, when you find yourself in a place of brokenness.

To wake up and have to face some realities in your life is tough. Especially when you had been doing everything in your power to ignore or cover up reality. It's really easy to do, until you become exposed and all you have left to do is sit and look at what all the ignoring and covering up has done.

It's like walking into your house one day to a horrid smell. You have suspicions that you have mold in your house, but instead of looking for the mold and getting rid of it, you clean everything you can see, spray febreeze, light candles, anything and everything to cover up the stench. You work so hard at it that you eventually convince yourself that it's gone. Truthfully, in your mind it is. You've become immune to the smell.

You then decide you're going to sell the house. You're shopping for realtor's and a few have even walked in and never said a word about the stench. Then, an honest realtor walks in and smells the stench. Instead of ignoring it and not saying anything they say, "Uh, something smells really bad in here. I think you might have mold in your house. I really want to help you sell this house but we honestly can't until you fix the mold problem." BAM! Denial is over, you are forced to face the fact that something is wrong and you're gonna have to put the time and energy into fixing it.
When you've been ignoring the problem for so long, it makes it hard to face reality. As much as it hurts and as much time as it's going to take, facing problems and fixing them is going to get you where you need to be.


So here you are, denial is over, you've have come to terms with the fact that mold is in your house somewhere. Then the hunt begins. The smartest place to look first is somewhere where water has access to right? So you look under your kitchen sink and it's worse than you thought. MOLD IS EVERYWHERE. It's all under the sink, it's in your cabinets, it's in your walls, it's under your floors. What happens at this point? You're pissed! "What the hell was I thinking?! Why didn't I just look under the sink in the first place?! Why didn't I address the problem when I first smelled it? Now I have to redo my WHOLE kitchen. Good job self."



The anger continues on and off as you begin the process of tearing down your cabinets. As your cleaning everything out to redo your kitchen, you run into appliances that have been handed down to you. You want to keep them, these appliances have meaning behind them, it's more than just an appliance to you now. But because of your denial, the mold has moved onto the appliance and it unrepairable. Anger has turned into sadness at this point. Your heart is broken because you know you'll have to throw the appliance away. Yeah, it's just an appliance, you can buy another, maybe a better one, but the person who gave this to you, who trusted you to keep it is going to be hurt. Tears fall harder.


Now here you are. You can't even recognize your kitchen at this point. There are holes, piles of broken pieces. But yet, in the midst of the clutter and chaos, an overwhelming sense of peace comes over you. As you stare into the mess, you notice your eyes begin to water and unexpectedly, a huge smile crosses your face. The smile is brought by one simply amazing thought, "The mold is GONE."


The world is completely changed at this point, because even though you had to lose some special things along the way, you know you're going to be able to have a newer and better kitchen. You can walk into your home without fear of a band stench or fear of other people knowing about the stench. You don't constantly have to spray things in your home to cover the smell. A vision comes into your head of a peace and comfort that doubled.... no, tripled.... what you had before. Even though there is still a huge mess to begin cleaning up, planning, and remodeling to be done, you realize that for the first time in years, you have a sense of hope. Beautiful, beautiful hope.


I love the verse I posted at the beginning because it reminds me that no matter what I do, no matter how deep my denial was, no matter how big of a mess I have made, Jesus is STILL advocating for me, and he will NOT with hold his love or the goodness he has in store for me. I'm so lucky to have a love this big in my life!